Rave Reviews
This week in the Marin Independent Journal, I reviewed Marcus; or The Secret of Sweet, ACT’s conclusion of Tarell Alvin McCraney’s The Brother Sister Plays, and also reviewed Cinnabar’s double bill of Jack Paglen’s new comedy We (Heart) U, Nosferatu with Menotti’s opera The Medium. And you know what? They’re really, really good. So you should go check out those reviews, and check out those shows too while you’re at it.
The Right Kind of Trouble
Alice Childress’s play Trouble in Mind feels both very much of its time and ahead of it. First presented off-Broadway in 1955, a month before Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger in Montgomery, it’s full of the energy of the early days of the Civil Rights Movement, the sense that something has to change.
Shining Mirrors
When you walk into Intersection for the Arts to see Mirrors on Every Corner, the new play by 25-year-old playwright Oakland native Chinaka Hodge, it looks more like a gallery exhibit than a stage set. Evan Bissell’s art installation and set design run together, with a mural on the rear wall of one Mission family and a side wall of framed portraits and short ruminations on race and identity from other families around the neighborhood. The seats are obscured by two rolling dividers displaying large photos of the flattened Nimitz Freeway right after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake and what looks like the shiny new Mandela Gateway apartment complex across the street from West Oakland BART. A card table with hands dealt sits in the middle of the room, and a baby bassinet hangs low from the ceiling in the corner.
